12,597. RUDIMENTS, pt. 978

RUDIMENTS, pt. 978
(more overlooked than remarked upon)
Elmira was always kind

of funny, because it had,

among its inhabitants  -

and most probably due to

remnants of its legacy of

old industrial money and,

as well, the presence of

the college  -  this sort of

'rube,' outside pretension

to 'culture,' as they defined

it. That meant, mostly, a very

mannered art sown in the

local Arnot Art Museum, and

the attendant pretensions to

European high art of culture

of old. Lots of swashbuckling

portraiture, enormous scenes of

elites, and estates, battlements

and, curiously, they also had

a sub-specialty of old, 19th

century 'Medical' paintings.

That's what I called them

anyway. Paintings of old

operations and operating-room

arena-seating medical scenes.

It was weird, yes, but if you

gave a minute's thought to

how the citizens kind of held

high all that old, period, stuff,

it made sense, or some sense,

to see the painted scenes of

medical theater and drama.

I never got into it myself, and

wondered about it. Firstly, it

seemed always male  -  the

doctors, and the patients,  -  and

any female portrayal was just

holding a tray of implements,

in the manner of an extra. And

the explanations alongside the

painting never made mention

of anything except Dr. So and

So and his skills and the steps

he'd implemented with his

groundbreaking work leading

to advances in battlefield

trepanning or surgical removals,

or some British guys, in their

operating theaters, perfecting

appendix removal or whatever.

It was all pretty matronly, in

fact, except there was never

any mention of the female side.

I used to wonder who cleaned

pans and drained the bloods and

boiled the needles and all that.

No mention ever given.

-

The one thing I noticed, in fact,

about Elmira's version of 'High

Society' was how matronly it all

was, almost Victorian in manner.

Shock and surprise seemed always

next to come : The Garden Club;

the Ladies Society of Elmira; The

Elmira Women's Club; etc. Half

proper, half smart, half dumb,

and half perverse. I think if they

had seen a roomful of real 'modern'

art, or 1970's nudes, or anything

like that, they quite possibly would

have swooned. The other funny thing

was how I never saw any 'Daughters'

of Elmira. It was kind of weird;

either they never had female kids,

or the girls left town immediately;

marrying off maybe, or fleeing.

The College had its own coterie

of girls, yes, of course, but they

were from somewhere else. I never

saw any overlap. My one friend,

Mary Kay, was Elmira born and

bred, and a very cool, odd person,

but she was peripatetic and her

travel habits had her everywhere

but Elmira. Worth every penny

of a dollar for sure, but little

connection to Elmira. And there

were the Trell sisters  -  from

Colonia, in fact, right by the

monument on Chain o' Hills

Road. They were triplets, as

I recall, each with a 'D' name,

Debbie, Diane, and Donna, I

think, and I remember them,

together (or maybe two of them

anyway) in the years around 1974,

being enrolled as a group. They

lived in the new 'dorm towers'

just a block or two off from my

house. There were two things,

back then, that were the new

pride of Elmira College : those 2

new, matched, dormitory towers,

(which I called the Twin Towers,

after NYC); and the geodesic

sports dome that had just been

erected over in a field about

5 or 6 miles from the College.

It was the (pretty dumb) college's

effort to attract males to the

school (which until 1969 had

been females only, for some 150

years previous). The school's

leaders paired Males with Sports,

and thus built the equivalent of

a quite trendy, Buckminster Fuller

Geodesic Dome (maybe 2 of them,

I can't remember that either), for

the crush of indoor Winter sports,

for males  -  basketball, hockey,

ice-stuff, and an indoor running 

track. Nice try. They're still there,

and they seem to have aged OK,

and are now played up with major

signage and all that. It's the scholastic

equivalent, in its way, of the Elmira

art world proclivity to matronly

things; except this is to the tune

of boys. Odd. The other big thing

the school had (this might have

'something' to do (ha!) with having

males recently aboard) was a new

facility for women's health and

medical needs. The new Medical

Center was a big on-campus deal.

I guess guys could use it too, but

there were enough controversies back

then about dispensing condoms,

or not, venereal stuff, and even

abortion services, to make one 

wonder. That too is still there.

-

In the same way that Mark Twain

was held sacred and renowned

for the old city of Elmira, so too

were all the traditional formats of

'culture,' fine taste, and 'proper'

deportment and breeding. Even 

if no one really knew what they

were doing in doing so. A lot of

today's consciousness, in the 1970's,

was not fully around : eco-culture,

reverence for Nature, and all that.

Even Mark Twain's gravesite and

graveyard  -  now all done up with

signs and notes and storyboards

about him and his family, and the

other graves of 'notables' like Hal

Roach and Ernie Davis, and varied

slaves and runaways and all that

Underground Railroad stuff  -  AND

the old prison camp, the masses of

Confederate dead, etc., all of that

was more overlooked than it was

remarked upon. No one cared,

and it was all just another scruffy

grave, here and there, of this and 

of whom. Whatever, and a big yawn.

I remember one time, my family

was visiting, and I took them over

to the Mark Twain site  -  not that

it meant anything special to them  -

and in the ensuing rush, my mother

got the car door slammed on her

finger  -  blood gushing everywhere,

a quick trip to the hospital needed,

etc. That took the place of any

Twain grandiosity.

-

Charles Tomlinson Griffes, as I said

in the previous chapter, was an Elmira

boy  -  a local by birth anyway. He died

young, of influenza, but left a body of

music, ('modern' in its terms, then), and

a society for him and his music, also

quite revered, by the same people who

revered all the Arnot Art Museum stuff.

I don't know, he seemed without any

gumption, and pretty ball-less to me,

but that was just me and an unschooled

opinion. No one else around town

knew what to make of him. He certainly

was no Led Zepplin for his day (big

around Elmira's bars). I've always

liked definition and precise lines

and borders (well, maybe, not always),

and Griffes never seemed to offer any

of that. My friend John Barry, as I

recall, a college guy from Indiana, 

was a clarinetist or something in one

of the Griffes ensembles there. He

seemed to perfectly embody the music,

somehow. He'd relocated, with his wife,

from Indiana, and to make the trip, they

had a large moving van they rented, and

he drove his Mercury Capri up into

the truck, and loaded boxes all around 

it. Lo and behold, I'll never forget, they

got to Elmira and the car, from the

boxes rubbing it all during the trip, had

been chafed of its paint in every spot

that a box had touched the car. 'Hi!

How do you like my polka-dot Capri!'
(The body shop guy called it 'chafing').